Email: natascha.stroo@vu.nl

VU University Amsterdam, Dept. of Biological Psychology

Info on genetics and psychopathology

This section hosts general information on genetics and psychopathology, articles for parents, families and patients.

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Depression and Quarantine
By Miljan Jović, 16/04/2020. An article by Miljan Jović researcher from the University of Twente, the Netherlands. An interesting blog entry about the psychological impacts of quarantine during various epidemics. According to the World Health Organization (WHO), depression is a leading cause of disability worldwide.... Read more
Will Big Data provide insights into psychiatry?
By Hema Sekhar Reddy Rajula, 17/01/2020. The extracted information from brain imaging datasets provides more accurate inferences about diseases, causes and which features would be useful for diagnostics. Can experts in Big Data look at brain scans from patients living with....Read more
How mother's smoking during pregnancy might harmfully impact offspring's health?
By Ville Karhunen, 10/01/2020. Mother’s smoking during pregnancy is known to be associated with the offspring’s health outcomes, such as childhood behaviour and other health conditions later in life; some of these are related to mental health......Read more
What is heritability?
By Ashley Thompson, 20/12/2019. Heritability is a word often used in popular science articles; however it is frequently misunderstood, even by scientists. Heritability is the difference, or variance, of a trait between people that can be attributed to differences in genetic factors. To phrase this in another way.....Read more

Recent Blog posts

The CAPICE blog hosts news and announcements, events, media and articles, mostly written by the Early Stage Researchers (ESRs).

They will pursue the publication of articles about their research during their activities carried on within this project, and this blog will act as a travelogue to disseminate the research results to a broad audience of scientists, clinicians, patients and their parents and the general public.

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The CAPICE project endorsed the joint event "40th Congress UMEMPS / 15th International Workshop on Neonatology", Cagliari, Italy, October 24-26, 2019. The 40th Congress UMEMPS (previously held only once in Italy) had more than 700 participants and was accompanied by several national and international institutions and scientific societies. On Saturday, October 26th, a Congress session has been dedicated to a Meeting on Neurology and Psychopathology in collaboration with SI-DOHaD (Italian Society Developmental Origins of Health and Disease), where the CAPICE project findings and forthcoming steps were presented.

A video gallery on the official Youtube page of the event is available and contains the following 2 videos focused on CAPICE, and several videos showing the CAPICE patronage (and many more videos from the last edition of the Workshop on Neonatology).

More information and a photo gallery are available on the Facebook page of the event.

Here the interview with Prof. Sebastian Lundstrom and Hema Sekhar Reddy Rajula are available.

Prof. Sebastian Lundstrom - CAPICE project results

Hema Sekhar Reddy Rajula - CAPICE project: poster presentation, Childhood and adolescence psychopathology

Agenda of the session dedicated to CAPICE. Meeting on Meeting on Neurology and Psychopathology:

Saturday, October 26th

Moderators: Antonio Noto (Cagliari, Italy), Salvatore Savasta (Pavia, Italy)

Anesthesia and the developing brain. Gabriele Finco (Cagliari, Italy)
Autism: pathogenesis, prevalence and comorbidity. Sebastian Lundström (Gothenbürg, Sweden)
Omics in autism. Michele Mussap (Cagliari, Italy)
PANDAS syndrome: what’s new? Dario Pruna (Cagliari, Italy)
Childhood and adolescence psychopathology? The ACTION and CAPICE Projects. Mirko Manchia (Halifax, NS, Canada and Cagliari, Italy)

Discussants: Lorenzo Lodde (Cagliari, Italy), Hema Sekhar Reddy Rajula (Cagliari, Italy)

Two CAPICE posters presented:

Thursday, October 24th

Overview of CAPICE – Childhood and Adolescence Psychopathology: Unraveling the Complex Etiology by a broad Interdisciplinary Collaboration in Europe - an EU Marie Skłodowska-Curie International Training Network. Hema Sekhar Reddy Rajula (Cagliari, Italy).

Friday, October 25th

Overview of Federated facility to Harmonize and Analyze data in cohorts. Hema Sekhar Reddy Rajula (Cagliari, Italy).

Related publications (lectures and abstracts):

S. Lundström, "Autism: pathogenesis, prevalence and comorbidity", "Selected Lectures of the 40th Congress UMEMPS / 15th International Workshop on Neonatology. LECT 68", Journal of Pediatric and Neonatal Individualized Medicine (JPNIM), vol. 8, no. 2, page. 45-46, 2019.
M. Manchia, V. Fanos, "Childhood and adolescence psycopathology? The ACTION and CAPICE Projects", "Selected Lectures of the 40th Congress UMEMPS / 15th International Workshop on Neonatology. LECT 72", Journal of Pediatric and Neonatal Individualized Medicine (JPNIM), vol. 8, no. 2, page. 48-49, 2019.
H.S.R. Rajula, V. Odintsova, M. Manchia, V. Fanos, "Overview of Federated facility to Harmonize and Analyze data in cohorts", "Selected Abstracts of the 40th Congress UMEMPS / 15th International Workshop on Neonatology. ABS 33", Journal of Pediatric and Neonatal Individualized Medicine (JPNIM), vol. 8, no. 2, page. 25-26, 2019.
H.S.R. Rajula, M. Manchia, K. Agarwal, W.A. Akingbuwa, A.G. Allegrini, E. Diemer, S. Doering, E. Haan, E.S. Jami, V. Karhunen, M. Leone, L. Schellhas, A. Thompson, M. Mauri, V. Fanos, M. Bartels, C.M. Middeldorp, "Overview of CAPICE – Childhood and Adolescence Psychopathology: unravelling the complex etiology by a large Interdisciplinary Collaboration in Europe - an EU Marie Skłodowska-Curie International Training Network", "Selected Abstracts of the 40th Congress UMEMPS / 15th International Workshop on Neonatology. ABS 55" Journal of Pediatric and Neonatal Individualized Medicine (JPNIM), vol. 8, no. 2, page. 41-42, 2019.

Related photo gallery:

Full photogallery in the official CAPICE Facebook page of the event

Project objectives

1. To clarify the role of genetic and environmental factors in the occurrence, course and comorbidity of mental health symptoms across childhood and adolescence..
2. To establish the overlap in genetic risk factors with other characteristics related to childhood mental health symptoms, such as adult mental disorders, IQ and brain structure.
3. To identify genetic (inherited), epigenetic (due to chemical changes to the DNA) and transcriptomic (related to gene expression) variation associated with the occurrence, course and co-morbidity of mental health symptoms during childhood and adolescence.
4. To identify biological pathways associated with mental health symptoms and to validate potential drug targets based on these pathways.
5. To build a prediction model that identifies groups of children that are at highest risk to develop chronic symptoms and that should be targeted for more intensive prevention or treatment programmes.
6. To further develop the already successful EAGLE (EArly Genetics and Lifecourse Epidemiology) consortium into a sustainable international network of researchers in which collaboration is facilitated by data harmonization and IT solutions. This will enable joint analysis of data over cohorts..
7. To build a structure to disseminate the results to a broad audience of scientists, clinicians, patients and their parents and the general public.

These ambitious objectives can be achieved by training of the ESRs in:
- childhood and adolescent mental health symptoms and their (chronic) altereffects (as a result of a non-complete recovery from the mental disorder);
- methods to analyze twin data as well as large-scale (epi)genetic and transcriptomic data across multiple cohorts;
- dissemination of their results also through this website and its blog.

Get in Touch!

Contacts:
Prof. Christel Middeldorp, project coordinator
VU University Amsterdam
Dept. of Biological Psychology
email : c.m.middeldorp(at)vu.nl

Natascha Stroo, project manager
VU University Amsterdam
Dept. of Biological Psychology
email : natascha.stroo(at)vu.nl

Matteo Mauri, web & dissemination manager
University of Cagliari
email : matteo.mauri(at)diee.unica.it

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Project Consortium

The project relies on a large body of competences, since it comprises 10 partners, from 4 different countries: VU University Amsterdam, Erasmus University Medical Centre and University of Twente (Netherlands); King's College London, University of Bristol and Imperial College of Science, Technology and Medicine (UK); University of Gothenburg, Karolinska Institutet and Janssen-CILAG AB - pharmaceutical companies (Sweden); University of Cagliari (Italy).

Partners

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Info on genetics and psychopathology

Depression and Quarantine

Will Big Data provide insights into psychiatry?

How mother's smoking during pregnancy might harmfully impact offspring's health?

What is heritability?